Old Ma Vilhunen tossed and turned on her straw bed. Her body ached and craved sleep, but her mind was alive with the events of the previous weeks. Something was about to happen and Ma Vilhunen knew what it was. It had all happened before when she was a young girl.
Her grandmother, Arja Vilhunen, had been a Forest Finn descendant, the most famous “Tietäjä” or wise woman of her time. Nowadays she would simply be called a witch, but her powers cured diseases or caused them. She could cast spells and control wild animals. She possessed a vast knowledge of medicinal plants and regularly predicted imminent events. Ma Vilhunen could also foretell the future and it did not look good.
The forests of Finnskogen that surrounded Lake Skasen were alive with strange whisperings and moving shadows. Odd things had been happening in the area around her Black Cottage. Phenomenon she could not control.
Magic rings of toadstools had appeared around the sun cross and more worrying still, a new cross had appeared, dead and brown, in the forest soil. A birch tree, covered with horrid outgrowths, howled and whizzed as a warning not to come too close. Even the animals were behaving peculiarly; bears had been seen again in the Finnskogen forests and a solitary female moose lingered near the Black Cottage.
Whatever the reason for all this strangeness, Old Ma Vilhunen felt sure it had something to do with the Big Green House, also known as Villa Skasen, and Kitty Olsson. She had been the cause of all the problems in 1940 and there would be trouble again now. The weight of responsibility suddenly felt very heavy.
The eerie chilling screech of an owl resting on the roof made her jump. She rolled over onto her back and slowly opened her eyes. She stared in amazement. The walls of her cottage were alive with swirling colours, green and yellow, moving back and forth and swaying together in a luminescent dance. Astonished, she clambered off her tiny bed and cautiously peeped out of the window. She gasped, not at what she saw, but because it was there at all.
Muttering to herself, she slipped on her birch-bark shoes and black woollen cloak. She swung open the cottage door, hobbled awkwardly down the steps and crossed the forest glade. The swirling lights lit up the clearing and danced across her black cottage with its dovetail corners and small windows.
The moose edged away into the shadows as the old woman entered the Finnskogen forest. The branches plucked at her long grey hair and the roots tried to trip her up. Panting heavily, she almost fell, but managed to regain her footing.
She made a detour to avoid the hissing birch tree and after about ten minutes saw the glimmer of Lake Skasen through the trees. Ma Vilhunen sank down onto its mossy shore and gazed up at the Northern Lights.
She gathered her woollen cloak around her and tried to catch her breath. You did not have to be a “tietäjä” to understand the significance of this sign, nor any of the others. The whole area of Finnskogen was in danger and they had been warned. Just then, the outline of the Big Green House standing on the shore of Lake Skasen caught her eye.
Ma Vilhunen sighed, “Kitty Olsson, what have you done now?”
The solitary figure of an old lady stood on the vast porch of Villa Skasen. Her silver hair fell to her waist like a veil, and her eyes were a piercing blue. Above her, the swirling, misty streams of light danced, first closer then receding further away over the tops of the trees. Transfixed, Kitty Olsson gazed up and a smile played on her lips as she breathed a single word.
“Dragonmoon!”